Donohue: Attacks 'not personal'

After spending tens of millions of dollars to defeat Democrats, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue moved Wednesday to assure his board of directors that Washington’s biggest business lobby can still work with President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats.

“Since the elections, we’ve been asked whether the Chamber will be able to work with the administration and those in Congress who criticized us. The answer is, of course we can. It’s already happening,” Donohue said in a speech to his board of directors, his first public remarks in the States since Election Day.

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“This is not personal with us, the whole question of how we get along. It’s about representing our members,” he said.

For instance, he said, Chamber and top White House officials worked last week on Obama’s failed push to reach a free-trade agreement with South Korea. The Chamber will launch a major initiative to sell the public and policymakers on how global trade creates American jobs.

Still, Donohue spent most of the speech outlining how the Chamber will beef up to fight some of Obama’s signature achievements, including health care and Wall Street reforms.

Donohue railed against the “regulatory tsunami” created by the Obama administration. For example, the new health care law creates 183 agencies, commissions and panels while Wall Street reform calls for 540 new and suggested rules.

For months, the Chamber has criticized the Democrats’ regulatory push, arguing that many of the new rules are unnecessary, costly and create uncertainty in the market, which is keeping companies from investing and hiring.

“This is where government is going. Regulation is the vehicle by which some seek to control our economy, our businesses and our very lives – and left unchecked, it will fundamentally weaken our nation’s capacity to create jobs and opportunity,” Donohue said.

To amplify that message, the Chamber will start a new group aimed at painting regulations as a tax on the American people. Pressed after his speech to explain the new group, Donohue offered few details, saying only that the work will be done using existing Chamber staff.

Donohue said the Chamber will also push to renew the Bush tax cuts, rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, improve public education and fight efforts requiring the Chamber, and groups like it, to disclose more information about their donors.